Analyst Believes Microsoft Will Become Irrelevant If They Don’t Succeed In The Tablet Market

We’ve heard the arguments and opinions in the past that tablets are considered to be part of the post-PC era, and that as tablets become more powerful, it wouldn’t be a stretch of the imagination if one day they might even replace laptops. While laptops still have a ton of use left in them, perhaps that future might be soon, but at the same time research group Gartner believes that Microsoft needs to succeed in the tablet market if they wish to remain relevant. As it stands, Microsoft has their own series of Windows 8 tablets in the form of the Surface RT and the Surface Pro, both commendable devices but we’re not sure if they took off the way Microsoft had expected.

According to the analyst who led the research, Carolina Milanesi (via The Guardian) “Winning in the tablet and phone space is critical for them to remain relevant in this shift […] We’re talking about hardware displacement here – but this shift also has wider implications for operating systems and apps. What happens, for instance, when [Microsoft] Office isn’t the best way to be productive in your work?” That’s a pretty interesting point she raised, but what do you guys think? Could Microsoft be made irrelevant despite their dominance in the desktop market?